But it was an ending...

I completed The Wheel of Time.

It took me a calendar year, but I read all 14 books.

The school librarian emailed on 2/26/20 that she'd checked the first book out to me.

Last night (2/26/21), I finished the last few hundred pages of the 14th.

What a ride. RJ is one of the monoliths of world-building. Sanderson did a good job with the impossible task of trying to wrap it up. 

Thoughts on the final book: To be honest, I had to push myself through the first half of the book at times. It's not that it was terrible, so much as I was overloaded and ready to be done. However, somewhere in the massive chapter that could've been it's own novella (216 pages!), the payoffs started coming and I found myself drawn in further and further. "Oh, that's a brilliant tie in." "Ha! Tricked me there." I started reading while waiting my 15 minutes post-vaccine shot and kept reading for the rest of the day. Shane interrupted me many times, but once he went to bed I read until past my bedtime to finish the book.

The ending was "exquisite."

Would I recommend the series to someone else? It depends. 

I enjoyed most of it. The world-building is top notch and I'm curious to see what Amazon does with the streaming series they're making out of it. If you like big, complex worlds of not cookie-cutter fantasy this could be your series.

However, there were times it felt like work to read. I had to push through some chapters (even books *cough, cough* Book 10! *cough, cough!). RJ knows how to do delayed payoffs like no other.....meaning he can make you wait for books before you hear hide or hair of a storyline. When he does reveal something it can be mind-blowingly awesome, but, as stated, it can take work to get there. Does the work make the payoff more powerful or does it drive you away from reading a series with millions of words? 

This was actually my third attempt to read the series. It really helped having a group to read through it. I met with book club at brewery for the first time on 3/16/20. Scott's on Book 14 now, but Mark is still back in book 7.

I'm glad I read it. Now if a book nerd asks me, "What did you do during quarantine?" I'll answer "I read the Wheel of Time!"